Page 31 of Lady of Darkness
My stomach swoops down low at his words–at his claim.
Our woman.
“I didn’t–”
The sound of a shot fills the air, and Luka screams again. Both hands are bloodied now.
Gideon walks up to Theo and whispers something in his ear. Theo smirks, and then he twists around, shooting the window. It shatters, and I flinch from my place on the bed.
“Your men are dead,” Theo says, his voice eerily quiet. “We killed all two-hundred and twelve of them.”
“Impossible,” Luka sneers, baring his teeth.
Gideon marches over to Luka, placing his gun against Luka’s skull. “I’d be happy to show you their bloodied bodies. There was a fucking massacre up there.” His voice is smooth like velvet. It feels like a warm balm against my skin.
Four men killed over two hundred men.
They’re powerful, immenselyskilled.They truly are at the top of the food chain.
Luka was wrong.
The LordsareGods.
Gideon and Theo grab Luka by his arms and drag him to the open window. The Lords are so much bigger, their presence so much more powerful. Luka looks like a child next to them.
“I want you to think about touching what’s not yours the entire way down. Goodbye, Luka. How did you phrase it? Oh, right. Every empire eventually falls,” Theo growls, shoving Luka forward and out of the window.
Just like that, he’s gone.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Gideon rushes over to me, pulling me to a standing position and then into his arms. My body begins to shake as I cry, as I inhale his familiar scent. I feel Theo come behind me, and he tries to loosen the handcuffs.
“Fuck, we don’t have the key.”
Panic rises in my throat. “Shoot them off,” I beg, twisting around to face him. “I need them off. Please.”
Gideon runs a hand through my hair and down the back of my neck, and his eyes scan my face and neck for any injuries.
“Did he hurt you?” Gideon asks, almost in a whisper.
I shake my head. “No. He hadn’t…” I trail off, stepping out of my pants. My shirt is long enough to cover me, though I don’t really care being around them.
“Hold your hands to the side, little monster,” Theo murmurs from behind me.
I hold them up, pulling them apart as much as I can as Theo aims his gun at them. The chain is taut. “Do it.Please.”
Gideon’s arm snakes around my waist. He leans down and whispers, “Alaric can find a key–”
“I want them off. Now.”
Because as strong as I felt for part of tonight, when Luka had me on the bed, it was just a reminder of my past. Of that loss of power, of that loss of control.
That past haunted me for over a year.
And I refuse to be shackled to that past for another second.
Theo aims his gun and shoots. I flinch as my hands snap apart, as I feel the reverberation of the bullet rip through the metal and sever the chain. My knees buckle, and Theo catches me just before I fall.
He pulls me into his warm body as tears leak from my eyes. Not out of sadness, or because I was scared, I realize.
